POLICE in the US city of Cleveland used pepper spray to disperse a crowd following a civil rights conference on Sunday.

Website Cleveland.com reported that the incident occurred after the closing of the Movement for Black Lives national conference at Cleveland State University on Sunday afternoon — itself called to draw attention to police brutality.

Speakers at the conference included the father of Michael Brown, who was shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri, last year, the mother of Eric Garner, suffocated in a choke hold by New York police and the mother of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Cleveland boy shot by police in 2014.